It is quite true what philosophy says: that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forward. Which principle, the more one thinks it through, ends exactly with the thought that temporal life can never properly be understood.
– Soren Kierkegaard, quoted by Joseph Bottum in “The Judgement of Memory”
{ 2008 03 24 }
bethany | 01-Apr-08 at 1:12 pm | Permalink
As the Queen of Hearts remarked in Alice in Wonderland, “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”